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| Artist's rendering of a Virginia-class submarine. |
The federal government is broke. This past summer the U.S. was on the brink of default. The U.S. credit rating was downgraded. We’re pinching pennies and cutting programs like the National Endowment for the Arts and public television and radio, which is roughly equivalent to trying to empty the Pacific Ocean using a teaspoon. And yet on Saturday, we somehow managed to launch a $1.8 billion (yes, that’s billion with a b) nuclear submarine at Electric Boat Shipyard in nearby Groton, Connecticut.
Funny how we always have money to feed the war machine but not to feed the poor.
By Linda Felaco
Henry Ford once said, “Show me who profits from war and I will show you how to stop the war.” Although not a big fan of Henry Ford, local peace activist Joyce Katzberg points out that “It’s a real sad thing when our biggest jobs plan is for people to create the very machines that will bring about their eventual destruction.”
Joyce attended the vigil on Saturday to protest the launching of the latest Virginia-class submarine, the U.S.S. Mississippi, and wrote the following afterward on her Facebook page (quoted with permission):
I read the Providence Journal coverage of the launching of the U.S.S. Mississippi today. Not a word about the protest. There were many uses of the word “christen” or “christening” and a little about the priest’s blessing of the sub in the name of God. Now, I don’t get offended by calling a tax payer subsidized tree in a public space - like the Statehouse or the White House - a “holiday” tree instead of a “Christmas” tree - but I sure do get offended when they take the Christ out of “christen” and when the ministers of the faith and bestowers of blessings apply them to weapons of mass destruction. Yes, I mind that very much.
She went on to reminisce about the demonstration against the “christening” of the U.S.S. Corpus Christi back in the ‘80s:
There were some right wing christians there handed out a leaflet about how Jesus wasn't really the namby pamby Mama's boy pacifist that we “commies” make him out to be. According to them, he would have been very proud to have his name of the sub. I'm still not over them naming one of those things the U.S.S. Providence as if it was “the will of God” that we spend BILLIONS on nuclear weapons to threaten the people on the other side of the world.
Me neither, Joyce, me neither.
The Cold War ended 2 decades ago. Who are we fighting with these nuclear submarines? After the nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year, Germany is phasing out nuclear power entirely and Japan is seriously reconsidering its reliance on nuclear energy. And yet we’re still building nuclear-powered submarines? For what purpose?
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| Alternative conflict resolution. |
The warmongers and profiteers say, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Keep fighting the culture wars while we plunder the national treasury to fight perpetual wars!” So we fight declared and undeclared wars in some of the most impoverished countries in the world, because of course we can’t risk all-out wars against enemies who are a more equal match to us. And despite having already assassinated the world’s leading terrorist and most of his henchmen, we fight these wars largely in the guise of the “war on terror.” How you fight a war against an emotion, I’ll never know.
So by all means, let’s fight with the governor over his word choices. Let’s fight over the crumbs of the federal budget that actually go toward programs that help our fellow citizens. But don’t ever carve into the greatest portion of the pie that goes to feed the war machine.